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Why are so many College Dropouts Successful in their Life? – Mahesh Murthy Answered

Anshumaan Vishnu4 min read

In a response to this brilliant question on Quora, we got a wonderful response by Mr. Mahesh Murthy who himself is a dropout. Let’s see what he told on behalf of his own experience.

“I look at the apparently clever remark which is the top-voted answer here “only success stories are printed, not failure stories” and can see it applies both to dropouts and to college grads. You don’t find fawning success stories about the IIT + IIM who ended up as some middle-ranked pen-pusher and Excel-jockey in some global consultancy – though that’s more likely the case than anyone who appears on covers of magazines.

So I’m not precisely sure that’s a valid line of reasoning. It has little to do with what kinds of stories are written.”

I am also not sure of Balaji Viswanathan‘s line of reasoning that “the value of the education there was incremental” etc. for dropouts.

While I don’t have reliable scientific data, I have a couple of submissions to make. And these come from personal observation – being a dropout myself.

1. A dropout has no plan B. You don’t have a degree or a guaranteed job to fall back on. So you push yourself harder. I do feel I did so myself, when I recall my young years and those of my batch-mates.

2. A dropout starts earlier. I started my first business at 18 and failed. I started my second months later. And failed again. I then started working for others. And by the time my cohort had graduated, done their masters, etc. and come into the real world, I had already worked for 5 years, and they came in some 2 rungs behind me on the same corporate ladder.

3. A dropout has fewer fears, loans, expectations to live up to. My dad expected I’d end up waiting tables at an Udipi restaurant. It was not difficult to surpass this expectation. I daresay my friends who did the Engineering + Masters route had higher expectations to live up to.

I assume all three of these are some of the factors help someone become “successful” – whatever the exact definition of that might be.

That’s all, folks! I also agree with above three factors but what I think is that there is also an important point which is lacking nowadays is, skills. One should have at least one skill before starting up a business or anything on your own because you cannot depend on all the things on someone.